Marvell Releases Kinoma Play for Android and Kinoma Create SDK

Marvell has just announced the availability of the preview release of Kinoma Play for Android which includes a suite of 50 apps enabling digital media, social networking, location, and search.

It’s somewhat surprising that a silicon vendor releases a processor agnostic software for Android, but here’s the reasoning behind it:

“Marvell is investing in our Kinoma software platform because we understand the importance of great software to the success of our customers. Our vision of the Connected Lifestyle guides our product development. Kinoma Play truly shows the power of that Connected Lifestyle,” said Weili Dai, Co-Founder of Marvell. “I believe our customers can now build on Kinoma to bring increased value to their own products. Android is just the first stop. We’re working to bring Kinoma to additional Marvell-powered devices.”

Kinoma Play Home Screen

Kinoma Play Dashboard

Kinoma Play

Kinoma Play includes 5 dashboard:

Play shows near real-time information from every Kinoma app with news, social networks, recent photos, stocks, weather, the song you’re listening to, upcoming calendar events, and Kinoma app updates.

Search uncovers information by quickly collecting results from across every Kinoma app that supports search.

Places is a guide to what’s nearby, combining information from foursquare, Yelp, YouTube, Wikipedia, and HearPlanet.

Music is delivers photos, biographies, and videos of the artist you’re listening to now.

Send is the hub for sharing and organizing media: show videos on a television, tweet about a song, upload a picture to Flickr, download a podcast, or add to a playlist.

Part of Kinoma Play is the Media Connect app which shares media with other devices on the same network. This app supports Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) standard and allows you to:

Show pictures, music, and video from your phone on DLNA compatible televisions.

Play content from media servers on your phone.

Share content with neighboring devices by turning your phone into a media server.

Kinoma Create SDK

Marvell has also unveiled Kinoma Create, the SDK for Kinoma development on Mac and Windows (32-bit and 64-bit versions). Kinoma Create uses Eclipse IDE so that developers can edit, debug, and profile their apps in a familiar environment. Apps can be tested with the built-in Kinoma Simulator and/or Android smartphones over Wi-Fi.

Kinoma apps are written in Kinoma Play Script (KPS) which uses the same JavaScript language as HTML5.

To download the SDK, simply register on Kinoma Developer Site and they’ll send you a link to download Kinoma Create 1.1.27 and register your email to the mailing list (you can decline that in the email if you wish).

But for some reasons, the download just failed for me (tried twice) with a failure to read from server after a few MB were downloaded, so I can’t comment much on Kinoma Create…

Availability

The company says they work on extra features / improvements such as OpenGL support to provide a smooth experience on tablets. Marvell is also working on Kinoma for iOS. Kinoma Play has apparently been available for Nokia Symbian phones and Blackberries for a while as a paid application.